Land of a Thousand Rising Tides
by Eiruiel
Summary: Tensions have peaked in the Land of Whirlpools. Outside the country, the Five Elemental Nations stand on the brink of war; within, the bloodshed has already begun. Trapped in a vortex of political strife and personal vendettas, one young girl must do all that she can to survive... even if it's hard enough just to keep her head above the water. SI/OC set before the fall of Uzushio.
1. PROLOGUE

Published: 3/30/2015

Editrd: 11/2/2015

* * *

LAND OF A THOUSAND RISING TIDES

PROLOGUE

* * *

Whirlpool is a beautiful, terrible place.

The rivers glisten. The air is fresh. The hills roll in green splendor and the beaches seem to go on forever. The sunsets are stunning, dyeing the ocean a brilliant deep red… its hue is just like that of the blood being spilled all over the country.

Once upon a time, the people here got along well. Well enough that our government had been closer to a democratic republic than a military state, actually. Even though—or maybe perhaps because—we lack a daimyo and our Hidden Village is supposedly in charge of everything, Whirlpool had once enjoyed impressively amicable domestic relations. While the shinobi of the village had drawn the line at matters of national defense and foreign policy, they'd left things like commerce and labor to the hands of the common folk. Things had been pretty prosperous; as a nation of merchants and artisans, supported by home-grown farmers and fishermen, we had really been able to thrive. In those days, my mother once told me, people had been both wealthier and wiser, not to mention a whole lot friendlier. Very much the opposite of the way they are now.

Now... well. I don't know who started it, really, since it was before my time. The civilians began to riot; the Hidden Village put down martial law. Half of the people want to throw the shinobi out of power, claiming that the country is governed by the people, and the other half say the Uzushio-nin have always been in charge—they were just kind enough to let the civs have some power over themselves. But either way, no matter who is really in charge, it's a coup.

Either way, it's civil war.

It's all because of the Uzumaki clan. Everyone knows it. Both the Hidden Mist and Hidden Cloud are getting ready to destroy them, and it goes without saying that when they fall, all of Whirlpool will fall with them. The people are already suffering; with both Kiri and Kumo enacting embargos, the only thing keeping us afloat is our connection with Fire Country. It's a substantial one, to be sure, but it's not nearly enough to sustain the whole island. This, the rebels assert, is also the fault of the Uzumaki. They're too brash and they're not diplomatic. This souring of relations has come about because of their lack of political savvy, their childish displays of power, and their unwillingness to make compromise. They should have known better than to antagonize two of the Elemental Nations, especially when tensions are running so high with the threat of another world war. That's why, they say, Whirlpool should do everything to expel the Uzumaki. It's the only way to save the rest of the country. We'll be spared destruction so long as Kiri and Kumo get what they want: the end of the fuuinjutsu masters.

Obviously, the Hidden Village has a problem with that. Uzushiogakure was founded by the Uzumaki, after all. None of the ninja have any intention of letting them get their way.

And so Whirlpool stands, divided in two. The shinobi and the civilians who support them against the ones who call for their deposition. The latter of the two groups has taken it upon itself to use every opportunity to drive the Uzumaki out: interfering with missions, refusing to trade food and clothes, making lynch mobs and chasing whatever red-haired shinobi they come across. Or, well, they try. Ninjas are quite hard to kill, so the rioters usually settle for burning down houses and murdering their wives and children instead.

I know this first-hand. My father had been born and bred an Uzumaki.

My dad hadn't lived with us and he hadn't married my mother—they'd only been lovers—but he'd been kind to me. He'd supported us financially, and when he'd been able, he'd visited and played with me. He'd sent presents and souvenirs when he was on trips overseas and he'd never stayed away for too long. For a twenty-year-old, barely an adult, he'd been surprisingly responsible.

Uzumaki Haruo. That had been his name.

Every now and then, I like to stop and thnk about him. Then I quietly imagine what life would be if we were all still alive and together. He'd keep up the routine we'd had, visiting and sending money, before he would finally decide to come and take us to Uzushio. We would pack up our belongings and move to the Village Hidden in Whirling Tides; I would go to school, make friends, and he would teach me to be a kunoichi. He would finally work up the courage to propose to my mother, too, and then they would get married. Maybe they would have another baby. A boy, perhaps. I would play with him in the afternoon and he would call me oneesan. Or maybe I would be an only child and my parents would spend all their time doting on me, buying me things and playing with me and giving me hugs.

But I try not to daydream about it too much. It's depressing to think about things I can't have and it's not good to zone out for extended periods of time. Someone might mug me. Or rape me. Or maybe even just murder me.

My hair gives it all away, after all.

I usually try to keep it covered, but kerchiefs aren't foolproof and mine is rapidly becoming threadbare. Even though I've chopped most of my hair off, too, you can still see it in the front. The only reason I'm probably still alive now is because I inherited more of my mother's features than my father's—my hair is darker and more auburn-colored than the usual Uzumaki fire truck-red. Other children with more prominent features have a much harder time than I do, and I have seen many of them die for it.

Though, well, I suppose I have more going for me than just auburn hair. A lot of people don't believe it when I say I've been on my own since I was four. Ten-year-olds, twelve-year olds, teenagers and adults—everyone has a hard enough time already, surviving in the Whirlpool that is today. Sucked in by the crime, the poverty, the desperation... you could say we're already barely living at all. There is no way a four-year-old could have borne it long enough to see her eighth birthday. No child like that exists.

No, really. She doesn't.

When they shake their heads and say it's impossible, I agree with them. A four-year-old who could survive the murder of her mother, escape a burning house, and avoid the trickery of the countless scummy bastards looking to cheat everyone and anyone to get ahead, doing so for four whole years? With no support, mentor, guardian, or guide? No. No such girl exists. The only one who comes remotely close to it is me, and I am not four. I am twenty-six.

Well, technically, back then I'd been twenty-two. But either way that's why I'm still alive. A twenty-two-year-old, no matter how pampered and sheltered she'd been growing up, has significantly more existent chances of surviving a civil war. The fact that her body had been that of a four-year-old's had only been a handicap. Mind over matter, as they say. It was hard, but I made it work. I lived despite it all. I've died once before and it's too soon for me to die again.

It doesn't matter that it's in a different body. It doesn't matter that it's a different life, in a different world, or even a world of fiction and imagination. All that matters is life. The sensation of life: of breathing, of eating, of talking and seeing and hearing and laughing and crying. Of anything but endless darkness. All of the questions like why and how cease to matter in the face of that endless abyss. The only thing that matters then is the because.

So yes, that is it. The four-year-old survivor doesn't exist, but I do. Blessedly, I do.

And I will do anything to keep it that way.

I grimace as a spray of blood splashes onto my shirt, splattering red drops across its already filthy threads. The man across from me gasps and rears back, dropping his knife so he can clutch his leg and curse. I quickly throw a kick between his knees and cuff him across the face before sprinting away, wiping my rusty kunai on my sleeve.

Violence is a staple of this country nowadays. It was like this even when my mother had still been alive. But despite that I usually try not to stab people in vital places if I can help it. Killing people is really only a last resort; the country is already shitty enough without me throwing dead bodies around.

Not that my contributions would make much difference. There are piles of corpses already. It's not really uncommon to duck into an alleyway and find that you're stepping on a dead man's face anymore. The first time it had happened to me, I sat next to the poor bloke's body and cried for near a half hour, but nowadays there's nothing to do but jump over him and go on your way. You can't help those people anymore. You're better off saving your energy; then you can spend it on someone who's alive, be it yourself or others. In fact, one of my first friends has been the one to tell me that when she'd found me weeping over that stranger's corpse: "Get a move on, unless you love him enough to be to be buried with him."

Her name had been Sayaka. Yamamoto Sayaka of the Uzumaki clan. Like me, she'd been the love child of a civilian woman and an Uzumaki ninja; he'd died in battle a few months before we'd met. We'd only been together for a single evening, Sayaka and I, but even today I find myself still thinking of her. She had run all over town with a Uzushio hitai-ate, obtained from a mass grave while scavenging, strapped over her flaming red hair. Ah, what a kid, so incredibly bold and foolhardy. I remember her very fondly. She'd been a filthy, lice-ridden, bastard Uzumaki child, and she'd been happy to let the world know it. I have no idea if she's still alive or not. Probably not.

Beyond her, I've mostly been on my own. I've had a couple of temporary partnerships, and there was even one point in time where I lived with five other kids in an abandoned shrine. As I duck under a chain-link fence and grimace when my bloody shirt smears red onto the bottom of my chin, I think of all of the things I learned from them.

Three of the five of them had actually been full-blooded Uzumaki with proper ninja training; of those three, only one had grown up in Uzushio. Fourteen years old, he'd been the boy in charge of all of us, and I can honestly say we wouldn't have lasted without him. Not only had he been mature and level-headed, he had known a boatload of ridiculously useful seals, and he'd made sure to teach us each of them. One for storing large amounts water that would otherwise be too heavy to carry, one for producing flameless heat that you could use in the winter, storage seals for clothes and for food... things that can really make the difference between life and death when you live this kind of lifestyle. He had also taught us how to defend ourselves, how to hold knives and what spots to aim for when someone wanted to hurt us.

After two months, though, he'd moved on. He had been a proper Uzushio ninja, after all, and he'd needed to return to the village. After being injured and separated from his squad, he'd holed up with us only as long as he'd needed to get into traveling condition again. I think he might have wanted to take us with him, but transporting a bunch of small children across the country had not been in his ability at the time.

In the end, he had left us with as much of his extra weaponry as he could have spared and bid us to come and make our way to the Hidden Village if we could. These days, he'd told us, they're taking in any refugee children who can prove heritage to the Uzumaki clan. "If you can make it to Uzushio," he had said, "you'll be saved. And if luck is on your side, you halfies may even find a parent in the village."

That had been two years ago. I take a deep breath as I finally emerge on the far side of town, the eastern edge that stops dead at the beginning of the Yuzu Foothills. The sun is finally beginning to rise and the sky is slowly lightening with shades of pink and orange.

I exhale.

Two years to drag myself across the whole of Whirlpool. Two years of squinting at a faded map with torn edges and running ink. Two years since Kenma had drawn it for me, and two years of dodging death and disease at every corner. Two years to make it to the final stretch.

Somewhere in those hills there is the Village of Longevity, Uzushiogakure. Somewhere in there there are hundreds of ninjas, watching over the country and waiting for stray Uzumaki children to come running home. Somewhere in there is safety. Somewhere in there is freedom.

I step forward and begin the climb.

* * *

A/N: In-depth information on LTRT is in my profile! Make sure to check out the poll!

Well, this is my first time trying out a proper story (as opposed to a one-shot or a sidestory) in the present tense. It's kind of strange; I can't count how many times I lapsed into past, and let me say nothing of my was/had been struggles. Still, it was a good break from tearing out my hair over writing the Kyuubi attack in Glory. It's refreshing to agonize over something else for a change.

Fun fact: LTRT's prologue is nearly twice the length of Glory's.


	2. CHAPTER ONE

Published: 1/17/2016

* * *

LAND OF A THOUSAND RISING TIDES

CHAPTER ONE

* * *

The throbbing of my head is unrelenting. Stumbling a little, I groan and bring my fingers to my temples in an attempt to massage away the incessant pounding, but it is a meaningless effort; the migraine persists. The past three days' gnawing worry finally begins to morph into a more visceral anxiety, and I am just a moment away from full-blown panic when I finally trip on a root and crash face-first into a thorny yuzu plant.

The cuts are shallow, but they sting like all hell. I jerk backwards and the barbs dig into my skin again. By the time I have extracted myself I am covered front and back with lacerations, leaking small beads of blood all over. My kerchief meets its end within the shrub's jagged womb, tearing nearly in two across the side.

For a moment, I can only sit there in speechless astonishment. Then I think, _I'm going to die out here._

Dehydration. Infection. Starvation. Malaria. All four options seem to be becoming more and more likely. There is nothing out here; there is not even the slightest trace of civilization. I am no master of orienteering, but after three days of circling the X marked on Kenma's map even I can say that there is no Uzushio here. My head fills with dark doubts, with thoughts like he was lying, he was tricking us, he was making it up to make us feel better—and I spend a long moment sitting there, not quite ready to admit defeat.

Oh, who am I kidding? Uzushio is a Hidden Village. How can a child like me expect to just waltz in? A child with no training at that. Was there even any hope for me here in the first place?

I feel two years of wasted time weighing down on my shoulders then, and when I get up and start walking again, I can only describe the sensation I feel as heartbreak. Was it wrong of me to hope for Uzushio? To hope for a better life there? Is there no choice for me now but to return to the Whirlpool below and live out the rest of my life in squalor and fear, always hiding who I am and running from the world?

I don't want to. I don't want to live like that anymore, without freedom or choices. I can't even take the easy way out like the other kids do sometimes—and I have seen many an Uzumaki child choose to throw herself into the sea over living the lives we live now—because never, not ever, will I be able to kill myself.

I cannot quit, but right now, I do not want to keep going.

The tears are not long in coming. I grit my teeth and hold my breath, squinting hard to keep them from falling. The bleeding is bad enough; I can't afford to lose any more water than I already have.

I spend four more days in the wilderness.

* * *

I am dazedly rolled over in the dirt when they find me. When I'd first laid down here under the tree, I'd promised myself I would only rest for a moment, but that moment had turned into an hour and that hour had become a day. At that point it occurred to me that I might have never had a choice to keep on living in the first place; it is very likely that I am going to die here no matter what protests or regrets I might have.

But then someone is pulling me up. Two fingers are on my neck, searching for a pulse as I limply let my head hang, too tired to even open my eyes. A moment passes in silence. Then a voice exclaims, "Hisateru, she's alive!"

There is a tiny rush of wind that carries the sound of almost-silent footsteps. A hand smooths my bangs back in a startlingly parental gesture, and then I find myself being scooped up in a pair of arms.

Through willpower alone I pry open my eyes. The blurry image of a middle-aged black-haired man meets my gaze. His hold is firm and fatherly, prompting in me the thought that he has carried children before. I lift my head sluggishly.

"Where's the rest?" the other man asks hurriedly. "She can't have come on her own."

"Can you tell me where your group went, kiddo?" the man holding me queries urgently. "Where the other children are?"

Other children? I furrow my brow and try to reply, but my throat is parched and all that comes out is a feeble, croaking cough. My pounding head begins pounding harder.

"Shouyo, you finish the patrol route," the man called Hisateru says, hurriedly turning around. "See if you can find them. I'm taking her back."

"On it," Shouyo replies. I watch the two men clap each other on the shoulder before letting my head drop again, feeling like total utter shit. Hisateru puts a hand on my forehead once more, murmuring something incomprehensible but oddly soothing, before taking off over the grass. It is a disorienting experience; he runs faster than anything I have ever experienced in my life.

At that point I must have been drifting in and out of consciousness, because the next thing I know I am being fussed over by a whole crowd of people. Someone is wiping my cuts with a damp cloth; another is checking my pulse; another is squabbling with the others about getting out of the way so she can start an IV.

I find myself searching for Hisateru, blearily looking this way and that. After a moment I catch sight of him off in a corner, talking lowly to two women. It is somewhat mystifying to see a black-haired man talking to two redheads so openly; it has been years since I have seen such a thing. People almost always avoid speaking to redhaired people in public if they can help it. Even if they aren't hatemongers and they don't agree with the discrimination, the risk of being labeled as a sympathizer is too great.

"You're up, sweetie?" one of the ladies fussing with some bandages asks when she catches sight of my open eyes. "You've done a great job. I'm so glad you made it to us. You're such a good girl."

Her praises jangle about in my head for several seconds before I make out their meaning. The skylights above her bathe her in evening light, and I can only stare dumbly at the sight of a clean, well-dressed Uzumaki woman with a warm smile on her lips. Behind her, gigantic high-rise buildings dominate the view. They obscure the sun, but the skyline sits framed in a corona of its reddish golden light.

Then, feeling a pinch of alarm, I slowly turn my gaze around the room.

_"There's this place called the River House. It used to be the old village hall, but now it's where all the kid refugees stay before a family takes them in," Kenma says. He makes circling gesture over his head. "They have windows in the ceiling there. It's really crowded, but the view is great; you can see the whole trade district when you look up."_

The River House. A crowded, lively building filled with child refugees. A temporary gathering place for them to stay while a permanent residence with an adoptive family is arranged. This is that place; I know it.

But the beds are all empty.

* * *

"She's stable now, but she isn't talking much. She's very unsettled," Minami tells the man just outside the door. I roll onto my side and peer over the top of my pillow. "It might just be the new environment, but..."

"But can we move her?" the man asks. After a moment, I decide it is Hisateru and not Shouyo; Shouyo would have just burst in and done whatever it is he wanted to do.

"At this point it all depends on her," Minami replies. "In these kinds of cases it's often the temperament of the patient that determines the speed of the recovery. Children in the past have both been helped and hurt when we moved them quickly."

"I see…" A moment of silence. "May I go in?"

Yes… definitely not Shouyo.

The door slides open and Hisateru is admitted to the room. He smiles when he sees me gazing at him from behind my pillow.

"Hello," he says to me, dragging an empty chair forward as he approaches.

"Hello," I reply, twisting my fingers together.

"How are you today?" He sits down and crosses his legs. The skin around his eyes is somewhat creased and very faintly wrinkled.

"I don't feel like throwing up anymore," I say after a while. "...Are you going to take me somewhere?"

It's been about two days. Contrary to what Minami thinks, I am not being driven mute by the shock of a new environment. It is just that a few things here have managed to catch me by surprise. Though given that hot tea and comforters were chief among them, perhaps it's not surprising that she thinks I'm having trouble adjusting...

"Ah, so you were listening." Hisateru leans forward and laces his fingers together. "Let me ask this first, though. Would you like to leave? Or would you prefer to stay here longer?"

I pull myself into sitting position. Then I look around me, taking in once again how empty the River House is.

"I guess it depends on where you would take me," I tell him after a moment, looking away from the beds and back to him. I would not like to stay here long, that is for sure. But two years alone in a civil war has taught me that it is far too easy to jump into a fire to get out of a frying pan. These days I find I go nowhere in a hurry unless my life is in immediate danger.

"I would take you to my house," Hisateru replies, "to stay with my family. With my wife and my son."

I cannot help it; my eyebrows fly up. Stay with Hisateru? Granted, I had figured he had a family of his own just by the fact he was so comfortable with handling kids, but the offer is still quite shocking. It is one thing to rescue a child. It is one thing to treat that child kindly and politely. It is something else entirely to take her into one's own home.

"Why?" I ask dumbly. It is a flummoxing suggestion.

"Well, as you can see, no one else is here," Hisateru begins, shifting a bit. "We had thought you had come with others and that Shouyo would find the rest of them, so we reopened the whole of the River House expecting to get a crowd of kids. But as it turns out you came on your own, and you're in here all alone… there's no need to keep the whole place open if someone is willing to house you." He shrugs. "Well, I said I was willing. Haruna was ready to take in a kid a year ago, back when they were still coming, and Hisao won't mind."

A year ago… I dart a glance at the bed next to me. A year ago, apparently, this would have been the River House Kenma described to me. What has happened since then to change that? What is something that would stop children from coming to Uzushio?

"How old is Hisao?" I ask after I realize I have been drifting from the conversation for too long. I mentally shake my head and resolve to investigate later.

"Exactly your age, if you would believe it," Hisateru replies, smiling a bit. "You're eight, right?"

"How did you know?" I ask, surprised again. I don't recall having disclosed my exact age in years to anyone here at all.

"Ah…" Suddenly, Hisateru becomes hesitant. I immediately give him my most suspicious look, and the silence stretches from alarmed to awkward. Several seconds pass.

"Well—" Hisateru coughs.

"Fukuzawa-senpai!" Minami suddenly exclaims, sliding the door open. "You've been summoned to the eastern outpost! Something's going on."

Hisateru is on his feet in a heartbeat, looking utterly relieved. I look at him incredulously, not quite believing he would jump and bail so gracelessly.

"We'll talk again when I get back, Yuzuki-chan," he says over his shoulder as he hastens to the door. Apparently, he would; he's out in a second flat.

"Bye," I say into the following silence, just a little flatly. I drop my pillow on the mattress; it flattens with a quiet _thwomp_.

* * *

Another two days pass before Hisateru comes back again, by which time I am itching to leave. I no longer have any reservations. He is obviously hiding something, but as far as I'm concerned he's a nice man and if he wants to try something he will do it here just as easily as anywhere else. I actually went as far as asking Minami to tell him I wanted to see him, so desperate I was to get out.

Hisateru seemed to have gotten the message, though, because when he reappears he does so in the company of a short, sturdy-looking redheaded woman who is carrying a rather enormous box.

"My wife," he supplies when I raise my eyebrows in surprise.

"Fukuzawa Haruna!" she exclaims cheerfully. "You're coming to stay with us, right? I brought you some clothes."

I look at the box. It's probably as wide as I am tall, and just as deep.

"That's a lot of clothes…"

"Right?" Hisateru snorts. He looks to Haruna. "See, I told you you could just wait til we got back."

"Nuh-uh," Haruna disagrees, chin jutting mulishly. "Look at her, she's wearing rags! And you said she came here barefoot. Of course I had to bring her clothes. It's not my fault that footwear is bulky."

"You could have just brought one outfit for her to wear," Hisateru says exasperatedly. "Then if she didn't like it she could have picked out something else at home."

"There wouldn't be any need to argue if you had just let me use the sealing scrolls," Haruna replies crossly. "You think I'm carrying this ginormous thing because I want to?"

"If I had let you use the sealing scrolls, you would have unloaded an entire department store in here," Hisateru points out wryly. "But enough of that. Yuzuki-chan will think we're morons."

"No, I won't," I immediately deny. I twiddle my thumbs a bit before giving in and cracking a smile. "I think it's cute."

Haruna immediately beams; Hisateru groans. "Just let her pick the clothes so we can go," he grumbles. "If we stay here any longer, Minami isn't going to let me hear the end of it…"

Haruna does not need to be told twice. She immediately hurries forward and throws the box down at the foot of the bed. I bounce a bit as the mattress bucks.

"Come here, come here," she says, waving her hand at me. I scootch over from the head of the bed as she begins pulling out shorts and shirts and skirts and blouses and dresses.

Wow. That is a lot of clothes. I curiously begin picking things up, holding them out and rubbing their fabric between my fingers.

"Mom used to make me stuff like this," I exclaim delightedly when I come across a yukata-styled blouse with ribbons threaded through the sleeves. Now that I think about it, hadn't Kushina worn clothes similar to these as a child? I suppose it is fairly common fashion for young girls in Whirlpool. Yayoi had loved to sit and spend an evening sewing clothes like these for me.

I find myself smiling a bit at the thought of my mother. Perhaps I did not love Fujioka Yayoi as much as what would have been natural—I think if I had loved her like a daughter should have, I would be far more grieved by her death than I am—but I'm not sure if there was anything that could have been done about that. After all, I had already been an adult when I met her; I had had another mother before her. The essence of "mom" would forever lie in the memory of another woman.

"Is there a bottom that goes with this?" I ask, setting the blouse down and rummaging through the rest of the box. Then I stop and wonder if I'm not being a bit too shameless. Most other people would be a bit more bashful about being offered an entire box of clothes, right? I look up, but both Haruna and Hisateru seem entirely unoffended.

I consider it for a moment longer before I shrug and forge on. Up until now the only other way kids like me had to get clothes as nice as these was to steal them off of someone else's back. Or to pull them off of dead bodies. In fact, now that I think about it, Sayaka had gotten her dress from the same mass grave she'd taken the hitai-ate from, hadn't she?

Once a skirt and a pair of modesty shorts have been located, Hisateru is shooed from the room and is only invited back in after I have changed and been charged with contemplating the pile of shoes. There is a pair of the standard clunky ninja sandals, some surprisingly modern-looking sneakers, zouri, geta…

After spending the better part of a year with bare feet on the ground—I'd lost my too-small shoes in Ajisai, well before I had managed to get around the mountains—I can safely say that closed-toed shoes are the most uncomfortable thing ever. The zouri are the closest things here to flip flops, so it doesn't take much more time to figure out what the next course of action is. I stand up, dropping down from the bed, and slip my new sandals on.

"Cute," Hisateru notes, tone carrying just enough surprise for me to know that his compliment is genuine. I wonder if I ought to find that offensive, but honestly, I know that I haven't looked anything but shitty for several years now. Sweating to death in the Yuzu Foothills had probably not done much to help that impression, either.

"All you need now is a haircut," Haruna muses, gazing contemplatively at the jagged, asymmetrical ends of my cut-with-a-rusty-kunai hair. "But we'll deal with that another time. Why don't we get going? Hisao's waiting at home."

We shove everything back into the box, struggle to fit its plastic lid on, and leave. I wave to Minami on the way out, who manages to simultaneously smile at me while smirking at Hisateru. Hisateru pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a long sigh.

The River House is built right at the water's edge, so we go up the embankment using a set of cracked stone stairs. The climb puts us level with the rest of the village, which is really more accurately described as a city. Straight ahead of me is a cluster of tower blocks, rising into the sky like square-topped mountains. I take a moment to stare thoughtfully. I have not seen such a crowded skyline in years; no place in Whirlpool could boast of buildings like these.

"That way's the clan residential district," Hisateru says, lifting an arm and pointing west. There, an enormous bridge is rising out of the river. It is a megalith carved into a curved sliver, held up by cylinders made of stone; torii gate it at either end, each bearing the mon of Uzushiogakure at its center. Beyond the bridge, black-tiled roofs stand, made with shingles that are curved and shiny.

It takes several minutes to traverse the trade district, and almost half as many to cross the bridge itself. Everything is, for lack of a better word, humongous. Such a place could only be a village in name.

"Uzushio is easily the largest settlement in all of Whirlpool," Hisateru says thoughtfully, seeming to catch my thoughts. "Our population isn't as big as our friends of Konoha's is, but it's sizable nonetheless."

"That's not unexpected at all," Haruna snorts. "You'll soon learn that Uzumakis breed like bunnies. For us, filling a town or two is no great task."

Curiosity piqued, I look up at her thoughtfully. "Is Hisao your only son?" I ask. Hisateru makes a sound like he's choking on his spit, and Haruna immediately throws her head back and roars with laughter.

"He is," she answers, waggling her eyebrows at Hisateru. Hisateru looks like he wants to crawl into a hole and die, and I sense an embarrassing story in my near future. "Hisao's an only child, so he's a bit of an exception. I, on the other hand, have seven siblings, and six of those seven have four kids apiece so far. Nonoka, the seventh, has five."

Six times four plus five… adding in Haruna and Hisao, that's thirty-one Uzumakis, ignoring parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and spouses. If that is the norm for people around here, it would indeed be very easy to fill a town or five with Uzumakis alone. Considering that this is the Village of Longevity, too, the elderly must also last quite a while.

I spend the rest of the walk in silence, contemplating the fact that there is actually a political faction in existence right now, tearing apart the country, that is calls for the total destruction of all these people. Forget Uzushio; the Uzumaki are all over. They were the settlers of this country. How many people here in Whirlpool could claim they were completely free of this clan's bloodline? I have been living under the shadow of the revolutionary faction for over half of my life, but just then I realize, for the first time, how utterly insane their manifesto is.

If halfas like me and Sayaka are Uzumaki enough to kill, they will run out of people to do the killing before long.

* * *

Fukuzawa Hisao is not redhaired, but he is undeniably an Uzumaki; his face is made of the same blunt angles and edges that my friends' faces were. Despite having grown up here in the safety of Uzushio, he does not look sheltered, or delicate, or squishy. He has the toughened, scratched-up, slightly bruised appearance of a shinobi in training. It is easy to imagine him fitting in among the ranks of the street-urchin Uzumaki I had lived so long with. He carries himself with an air of supreme common sense, and both his clothes and his demeanor are terribly pragmatic—yes, many of my friends had looked like this boy. But despite that, he is different. His gaze is straightforward. His stare sees the present.

This, the thought strikes me, is what young people should look like. Young people should have gazes that turn forward. Instead of watching the horizon, replaying distant pasts or dreaming far-off futures, they should be staring straight at the present moment.

"Fukuzawa Hisao," he introduces himself, matter-of-fact, as he sticks out a hand. "Hisao's fine," he adds, gray eyes shining curiously. Despite this, though, I get the sense that he is trying to act aloof. Not to seem cool, but because prodding would be uncomfortable.

What a considerate boy. I find myself shooting Haruna and Hisateru an approving look, which makes Hisateru smile and Haruna stifle a small chortle.

"Fujioka Yuzuki," I reply, taking Hisao's hand. "Yuzuki is fine for me, too."

Hisao opens his mouth to say something else; then he blinks and turns to his mother, as if just remembering something. "Mom," he begins, looking a little hesitant.

"What's up?" Haruna asks, tilting her head. Hisao sits on his thought for a moment before he speaks.

"Kushina came to visit," he says finally. "Um, I was just in the kitchens. The flour stock is gone."

Haruna immediately looks a cross between irritated and amused. Hisateru just goes pale.

"All of it?" she asks.

"The whole restaurant's," Hisao confirms. "Mom owns a restaurant," he tacks on for my benefit, glancing at me.

"It's right here next to the house," Haruna explains, making a gesture over her shoulder at the little building, sitting next to a larger one with the nameplate FUKUZAWA, behind us. "Open for lunch and dinner, twelve noon to two AM!" she adds cheerily.

"Oh," I say, not quite having expected that. It makes sense that people of other professions are living here in Uzushio—in fact, Uzushio couldn't exist if people of other professions weren't around—but somehow, despite the fact that I had even witnessed the size of the trade district firsthand, I had still sort of expected everyone here to be shinobi. "You're not a ninja, Haruna-san?"

"She was," Hisateru says. "But the pay was mediocre, and Haruna, well…"

"Haruna loves to make money," Haruna finishes wryly. "I make four times now what my salary had been then. I have no regrets. But anyway," she forges on briskly, giving her son a dry look, "Kushina and four crates of bagged flour. I'd better go get niisan… Hisao, while I'm gone, why don't you show Yuzuki-chan around?"

"Sure," Hisao says. As she leaves, he and I exchange glances before looking at Hisateru.

"I think I'm going to go stand in a wide open area with a 360 degree field of view," he mutters, anxiously looking up at the roofs overhead like someone is going to jump down and attack him at any moment. "Hisao, be good. Make sure you give Yuzuki-chan a good rundown the places she should steer clear of, too—if something goes wrong with Mom's stuff, it'll be _you_ that gets in trouble."

Hisao takes on a bit of a sour look. "You don't have to tell me," he says, a little defensively. "That's what I planned on doing from the start."

"He's gone," I say before a beat can pass, and indeed, Hisateru has vanished. "That was speedy."

"He's just worried Kushina's going to throw eggs at his face again, I bet," Hisao sighs with vexation. He rolls his shoulders. "Kushina is my cousin. She loves making mischief, and Dad is her favorite target."

"Kushina," I murmur, putting a hand on my elbow. "Uzumaki Kushina, huh?"

Naruto's mother. A remnant of a long-destroyed clan. In a few years' time, if things go as they were written, she would be one of the last ones left. And soon after that she would be gone, too.

"Yeah, Uzumaki Kushina," Hisao says, oblivious. "Her dad is Mom's brother, so she inherited the name. Not that it matters, really," he adds. "Everyone in this district is Uzumaki somehow anyway. Property inheritance isn't dependent on your surname, either, so that's why we get to live here on clan grounds even though we're the Fukuzawa family."

Wow, property inheritance? That's a concept that I am fairly certain most children this age would not grasp easily. When I had been eight for the first time, at least, I sincerely doubt I had known what property inheritance was.

"You're smart," I tell him, impressed.

"Thanks," he replies, a satisfied look on his face.

There is a moment of silence. Then we exchange grins, and I can't help but feel that my life is already getting better.


End file.
